Source Text: Algernon Sidney, "Court Maxims" (Ed. by H. Blom, E. Mulier, R. Janse, Cambridge Univeristy Press, Cambridge, 1996).
Compiled and Edited by J. David Gowdy jdgowdy@wjmi.org
"For as there is no happiness without liberty, and no man more a slave than he that is overmastered by vicious passions, there is neither liberty, nor happiness, where there is not virtue." (p. 24)
"If you examine who is a wise or good man in a philosphical sense, some will tell you he is a king, but his kingdom in only over himself and in himself. Rex est qui metuit nihil, Rex est qui cupiet nihil. Hoc regnum sibi quisque dat. " (p. 31)
"[V]irtue is the dictate of reason." (p. 33)
"Justice is that virtue which ought to be the perpetual director of all our actions in the world and the rule of commerce." (id.)
"All inequality is natural or artificial; that preference which can be challenged by a natural inequality is reasonable, if the nature of it suits with the thing in question, and the proportion will bear. . . . Artificial inequality may also give a just preference when that inequality is grounded upon principles of nature and consonant unto them, still observing the due proportion. . . . But those artificial inequalities which are repugnant and contrary to nature are in all respects to be detested and abhorred." (pp. 34-35)
"Wisdom is the power in man of judging what is good or evil, of knowing the ways of attaining good and directing all its actions to the attaining of it. Wisdom is seated in the mind and understanding, which has a natural excellency to that end above all the other faculties in man. And that person is out of frame that is not guided by it. The like may be said of civil societies. Wisdom only knows the end to which they are directed and how to find and use the means of attaining to it." (pp. 35-36)
"Commonwealths or civil societies are constituted for the attaining of justice, that everyone living in them may enjoy that which justly belongs to him and suffer nothing of others but what he has justly deserved. The links of these societies are the respective laws. These laws are either compacts made by men, or are given by God, who has a true sovereign power about all. All laws made by men ought to tend to the preservation of those societies in doing justice to all the individuals thereof. Every man is to see that he shall not suffer what he would not, if he do what he ought not." (p. 122)
"The justice therefore of all laws does necessarily and essentially depend upon the plainness and clearness of them, that every man may understand them if he will, or justly bear the penalty of his neglect if he will not when he might. Otherwise offenses are not prevented that are prejudicial to the society, and consequently the society is not thereby preserved." (id.)
"The essence of the law consists solely in the justice of it: if it be not just, it is no law. The justice of it depends upon its end: if it conduces not to a good end, it cannot be just." (id.)
"When the law is good, it directs how it should be rightly administered. The observation of such rules we call just government. This good government still refines and betters the law. The melioration of the law strengthens that which is good in the government, and still adds something better than what was before. Where things are in this right order, there is a perpetual advance in all that is good, until such nation attains unto the political perfection of liberty, security, and happiness, which were the ends for which government was constituted." (p. 132)
"Pittakes, to invite his children to unity and concord, showed them a bundle of arrows which they could not break whilst bound up together, but there was no strength in any one of them when divided. The same is true in a nation. He that desires to preserve it increases the power thereof by uniting all sorts of men in procuring things for the common good. He that divides it, weakens it; he that weakens it, as far as in him lies, destroys it." (p. 147)
"Laws are made and constituted as remedies to human frailty and depravity. Those laws only are good which lead to and encourage virtue, and punish vice." (p. 196)
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